


Inside Out reImagined

by CreativityTheEmotion



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Don't Have to Know Canon, Fantasy, Fix-It, Gen, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2020-10-10 14:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20529581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativityTheEmotion/pseuds/CreativityTheEmotion
Summary: Smack dab in the middle of puberty, Riley Andersen often feels as though she can't control herself. To one's surprise, though, five emotions inside her mind think very much the same; they just can't pull their girl's strings like they used to. As luck would have it, the Andersens also move house, and before they know it, the emotions are poised for the rollercoaster of a lifetime.





	1. The Big Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If the human brain were **so simple that we could** understand it,
> 
> we would be **so simple that we couldn’t**.”
> 
> _— Emerson M. Pugh, 1938 (first attested 1977)_

Joy awoke in her room, being first disturbed by light shaking, followed by the sound of splashing water and the sensation of droplets on her body.

She didn’t find the sound or sensation of water unusual, as she had slept in a bathtub. Something to note, though, was that there was no conventional bed in sight anywhere in Joy’s room; her bathtub _was_ her bed. It was a fairly large one, allowing Joy to stretch her body out without touching the walls on either side, and the water inside was just warm enough that she could comfortably lay in for just five more minutes, only her face floating above the water level for breathing, without a single care in the world.

However, Joy took her job rather seriously, and found “just five more minutes” to be completely unacceptable. Without further ado, she thus stepped out of the water and onto the rug by the bathtub, which had her name written on it in blue on gold. Immediately, she felt a different type of satisfaction, coming from the bathing suit tightly wrapping around her petite body. Indeed, she was awake and refreshed, and from here on, she would simply have to take care of routine tasks preceding yet another day of work.

Joy wasn’t sure how she felt about working such early shifts, or, for that matter, working throughout the near entirety of her waking life. Many others, she presumed, would find the experience to be absolutely soul-crushing and would quit such a job in a heartbeat. However, that wasn’t really an option for Joy, and regardless, she and her partners had gotten used to it.

And what mattered more than anything right now was that people didn’t usually go to work while soaked, and Joy would need to dry herself off.

She wasn’t one to dry herself off in a typical fashion, with a towel and all, and in fact, there was no towel in her room either. Instead, she stretched her arms upwards, before shaking the water off, much more reminiscent of a dog drying off than a human, and after a shake or two, her body was completely dry. Her long, flowing waves of blue hair still proved to be an issue, but once she picked them up by one end, rolled them up like a towel and gave them a good rinse, they, too, were dry, flowing to her mid-back like a river of happiness.

Of course, it went without saying that almost nothing mentioned so far would work for a human in the physical world. After hours of sleep in a bathtub, human skin, especially at the fingertips, would have shriveled up and everything would have become rough to the touch. In addition, the water in the tub would have become so cold as to cause significant discomfort and possible hypothermia, not things one would really want before a work day. Besides, drying yourself off like that would never work, and one would still need a real towel for the body and an electric hairdryer for the hair, likely spending an hour on locks as long as Joy’s. One didn’t even need to consider that no matter how diligent a human seemed, worker unions still existed to protect them from working hours even closely resembling Joy’s schedule.

However, Joy wasn’t exactly one to be concerned with pesky minutiae of the physical world, nor could she be called a human — at least, not if you severely stretched the definition.

At first glance, she could easily be mistaken for a human. After all, she had the body shape appropriate for a girl just starting puberty, with only the beginnings of curves having formed. However, even a second glance revealed many peculiar details about Joy. For one, her skin was bright gold and glowed, unlike that of any human. Furthermore, her body and hair weren’t made of solid matter, but rather, millions of particles that spontaneously appeared and disappeared, shimmering like TV static viewed through a golden glass.

Also, if one looked closer, they could notice more subtle, but still rather peculiar details about her anatomy. For example, while she had fingers on her hands, she didn’t have toes on her feet, and instead, they looked solid through and through. Even on her hands, her fingers lacked nails. In addition, while one could easily make an assumption that her ears were just hidden behind her hair, they were, in fact, completely missing. Despite this, rather mysteriously, her hearing worked perfectly well.

The truth of the matter was, Joy was an emotion, living and working _inside_ a human mind; namely, the mind of one Riley Andersen, who had recently turned fourteen years old.

Though the emotions were rather starkly _factually_ aware of the rules of the physical world as lived through Riley, in their actual perceived life, it didn’t concern them in the slightest, due to a little something called Imagination. Inside a human mind, Imagination allowed for virtually everything that was, well, imaginable, and those who wielded it were quite literally living their dream.

This especially applied to emotions amongst all thought forms, as each of them represented and was entirely composed of a single element of Imagination. This purity allowed for an immense prowess over the essence, unmatched by any other thought form. There was no overstating it, or repeating it too many times: Imagination allowed for anything, especially if you were an emotion.

However, while those abilities were incredibly powerful and useful in other circumstances, they were far from practical for Joy’s job or the preparation for it. Each and every day, she would have to go through her routine, almost like a human.

Almost.

Joy wasn’t one to go through lots and lots of intricate steps of a morning routine. In her heart, she was a carefree soul, who would be ready for virtually anything, the moment she was thrown at it — or more often, the moment she threw _herself_ at it. After drying off, she only really saw a single immediate issue with herself: the way she dressed was far from presentable at work.

For her bedtime, Joy was dressed in a lime one-piece bathing suit, decorated with light blue, disparate bursts and very thin, intersecting black lines. Indeed, this was perfectly fine while she slept, as she wouldn’t want to get more things wet than necessary. However, at work, Joy was a commander, leading Riley to a bright and fulfilling future and helping the other emotions do the same, and couldn’t afford to look like a little girl about to go on summer vacation — not that the emotions really had a concept of summer vacation, the outside world notwithstanding.

Luckily, her usual work outfit was right there, on a hanger put up on a nail in one of the walls, in lime much like her bathing suit. It was an outfit well-suited for a military general; while the pants weren’t too different from ones a human would wear, the overcoat had lots of decorations, including pockets, buttons, shoulder pads and, most prominently, a badge on the right side of the chest. The badge looked rather simple: a blue bordure, encircling a black-on-white stylized smiley face. There weren’t really any shoes to go with it; Joy usually went to work barefoot, and preferred it that way. In addition, the bathing suit doubled as underwear, and taking it off in order to put something else on was unnecessary and even silly.

Having gotten dressed, a task which took her no more than a few seconds, Joy was ready. She took a quick glance at herself in the water reflection on the bathtub, finding bright blue eyes staring right back at her, and then another quick glance at her room overall, the walls of which were mostly lined with various pictures of moments from both her and Riley’s life. It was a familiar sight for her, one she didn’t need to dwell upon for long, and soon enough, Joy found herself gracefully walking to work, almost flying.

Once she made her way through the door — a light lavender door, with a small, golden, star-shaped window — she was greeted with a view of the antechamber of Headquarters, the heart of Riley’s mind. Immediately outside her door, there was a narrow, raised pathway with rails, and along that pathway, four more doors could be found, each with a little window with a unique color and shape: the other emotions’ bedrooms, with Joy’s right in the middle.

The pathway, when walking on either side, descended onto a lower level, and led into an expansive lounge, primarily decorated by a winding tube that made lots of rather regular twists and turns. There were also other occasional decorations, like a relatively wide window revealing that Headquarters was rather high up compared to the rest of Riley’s mind, as well as chairs of various shapes, for varying degrees of comfort.

However, the most significant portion of Headquarters was at what Joy chose to see as the front: an elliptical screen, only slightly bigger than the window in the back, and a control panel right by it, with lots of buttons of varying sizes, colors and arrangements, as well as a double lever right at the center, colored in a slight blue tint. These two were the main instruments the emotions worked with: the Consciousness Screen, letting them see what Riley was seeing and hear what she was hearing, and the console, letting them tell her how she should feel and act about it. While the Consciousness Screen provided accurate color of what Riley saw, the console lit up dependent on which emotion was using it at the moment.

Many humans, and even those working closely with humans, would find it unusual that Joy’s workplace was just downstairs from her bedroom. In fact, most of the time, she didn’t think of it as a bedroom belonging to one’s personal house, but rather as a dorm, much like a place where she would have to live for a temporary stay.

Yet, the emotions lived according to rules of their own, which did, in fact, establish this as a permanent placement. These were by no means rules of their own _making_, nor were they written down anywhere, but nevertheless, the emotions abided by them, even if there wasn’t exactly a consensus as to what those rules actually _were_.

What had already been agreed upon, though, was the concept of Dream Duty. The principle of Dream Duty was rather simple: when Riley slept, four of the five emotions slept too, and one of them was to stay awake, sitting through the various phases of Riley’s sleep, including the dreams which gave Dream Duty its name.

Given that dreams were far from predictable and often not as dandy as she would like, Joy didn’t like Dream Duty that much. Indeed, she was glad to take the night off and sleep in — if it could even be called a night this time, with Riley going to sleep so early. Yet, she respected the duty, as well as whoever was taking it at any given night, including herself.

Choosing not to dwell on Dream Duty anymore, Joy wasted no time in dancing her way down the pathway and to the seats by the console. The emotion currently on Dream Duty was quick to realize what was happening, too; however, she was rather slow in getting up from the main seat at the center to the next seat over to the left. 

“Oh, hi, I didn’t notice you…” this other emotion said, in a rather miserable tone, as she scooted over.

“Heya. And no worries.” Joy shot back, giving the other emotion a quick glance before taking a seat of her own.

This other emotion was Sadness, and she could easily be described as the antithesis of Joy. The only two features that Joy and Sadness had in common were the bright blue hair and eyes, and beyond that, the two were as different as night and day, in appearance as well as demeanor.

Sadness was a whole head shorter than Joy, and overall, had a heavier build. The particles that composed her body were light blue and didn’t glow; they still had a vibrant color, but it was one that evoked melancholy, rather than glee. Whereas Joy had rather large eyes, which, alongside her own rather frail build, gave the impression of an excited child, Sadness’s eyes were comparatively small, and further visibly shrunk by her glasses, which took up most of her face, appropriate for a contemplative thought form. In addition, while Joy preferred longer hair to emphasize “going with the flow”, Sadness preferred shorter hair, only reaching up to her shoulders, as it was easier to maintain.

Despite this, Sadness, too, was an emotion, and shared quite a few of Joy’s oddities in anatomy. Like Joy, she lacked ears; though, due to the shorter hair, this was more easily noticeable on her. This, of course, meant that her glasses hung solely on her nose. Her lack of nails, too, was visible; however, her other oddities were well-hidden behind her clothes.

As far as dressing for work went, while Joy’s outfit reflected her representable attitude, Sadness preferred a more casual, comfortable fashion style, with a white sweater, dark blue jeans and dark blue flats. This was easily the most noticeable difference between the two, and emphasized their personalities the best; neither of them would be willing to trade their clothes in for their partner’s, and very likely, due to the different physiques of the two emotions, the clothes wouldn’t fit at all.

Their differences aside, though, Joy and Sadness enjoyed each other’s company as co-workers and housemates. If anything, the difference between the personalities only made them complement each other, rather than contrast: since Joy would easily be the one to go on endless tirades about nothing in particular, Sadness found herself listening to it, and proved to be a good listener.

That being said, while they interacted, for the most part, their individualities mattered very little. What truly mattered was their job, which primarily entailed becoming one with Riley: seeing what she saw, hearing what she heard, feeling what she felt and doing what she did. After the short exchange, the eyes of both Joy and Sadness were set on the Consciousness Screen, watching Riley’s first reaction to the shaking that woke her, as well as Joy, up.

It looked as though Riley struggled to open her eyes, as evidenced by the Consciousness Screen only displaying a thin band of view in the middle, but nevertheless, that was enough to provide the two emotions with bearings in the so-called “real life”. It looked as though Riley was seated, seat belt buckled at another emotion’s insistence, and many other people were seated around herself. However, out of all of them, the emotions only recognized two of them: Riley’s mother to the immediate right, sitting by a window of sorts, and her father to the immediate left, sitting by a pathway that separated another section of seated people.

Riley’s father, Bill Andersen, was rather tall and thin, only slightly muscular, and dressed in a formal business suit. He had dark brown hair and eyes, as well as a moustache. His hair was combed backwards, providing for a rather “smart” look, which the moustache, although it was plain and not overly curly, helped assist. 

On the other hand, Riley’s mother, Jill Andersen, was slightly shorter than her father and significantly more curvy, a clear sign of formerly having gone through motherhood. She wore a patterned, but mostly red and yellow sweater, together with jeans and flats. Like her husband, she had dark brown hair and eyes. Her hair was done up in a ponytail, and like Sadness, she wore glasses; however, while Sadness’s glasses had simple, black and circular frames, Riley’s mother had thick red frames, which were in fashion as of lately.

Yet, the all-too-familiar visages of Riley’s parents weren’t _that_ useful in determining her bearings, and instead, background details, that others would often overlook, proved to be king for the emotions. They could quickly note the multitude of seats and conclude: not only did buses and trains not have that many seats, but they also didn’t come with the sort of shaking that woke both Riley and Joy up. The final piece of evidence for Joy and Sadness was that the view through the window was a pale white, rather than any sort of scenery one would expect on a ground-based vehicle. They nodded to each other, realizing what it meant: the Andersens were still flying.

“Still up in the air, huh?” Joy commented, sighing deeply as she did; she had always dreamed of Riley being able to fly through the skies like a bird, and now, she had to confront the fact, only for the second time in her life, that flying in reality was a lot less magical. 

“That much is right…” Sadness lamented, before her thoughts drifted to the length of time that the flight took. She couldn’t help but comment: “Already, we’re so far away from home…”

“But… we’re getting closer and closer!” Joy suddenly exclaimed.

This made Sadness cock an eye; it would seem that she was still thinking of Riley’s old home in Minnesota, in the American Great Lakes area, whereas Joy, instead, was focused on Riley’s destination, which the emotions would have to call home from now on and for the time being. Indeed, this sort of confusion, with Sadness and Joy being almost on two different tracks, was common, and it didn’t fail to surprise the two emotions each and every time.

However, in the ensuing confusion, neither of them remembered exactly where Riley’s destination was in the first place. In order to settle this, it looked like they would have to recall a memory from somewhere within Riley’s mind.

If the emotions were the “head” of the mind, then memories were definitely the heart and soul, giving the little world in the mind a definite shape and purpose. Understandably, the console, their primary instrument of work, let them interact with the memories extensively, creating them as well as recalling them.

When newly created, memories took the form of glowing spheres, which showed a brief snippet from Riley’s life; these spheres were usually pale, and only few had a slight colored tint. In addition, they weren’t fully reliable, failing to properly capture every single detail of an event, and for significant events, it was always useful to keep spares.

However, in the particular case, Joy and Sadness were looking to recall a memory from an earlier point in Riley’s life. Memories were usually flushed whenever Riley slept, and in order to be useful again, they had to be processed in foundries and factories far beyond Headquarters. As the emotions only left Headquarters on rare yet semi-regular occasions, these processes were a mystery to them, but they weren’t terribly concerned with the finicky details; what mattered were the final results.

A rare type of processed memory, the audiovisual memory, _could_ come back the way it was, but it would often be distorted, as the gaps in the memory had to be filled in using Imagination. However, most types of processed memories had significantly different shapes, dependent on which part of the event they captured.

That being said, in this case, Sadness didn’t “ask” for much; perhaps a single statement or, if it was saved, a map of the general location, in the world. However, the sequence that she punched into the console was far from exact, and Sadness would simply have to wait and see what was actually being recalled.

Thankfully, the process didn’t take too long, and in due time, a processed memory made it to Headquarters. Once it dit, a projector behind Joy and Sadness turned on, projecting the memory’s image onto the Consciousness Screen. It seemed to be a map, after all, with a coastline looking like that of eastern Asia, with a city clearly marked: Shanghai, China.

Watching the memory being recalled, Joy nodded to herself; indeed, she had already put a lot of hopes and dreams into the new and exciting place. The foreign culture didn’t deter her at all — if anything, Joy only saw it as an opportunity to learn more and be more mindful. The distance that was going to separate Riley from her current friends didn’t diminish Joy’s enthusiasm either — after all, it was the year 2020, and video calls across the globe were already commonplace, to say nothing of the fact that Riley would probably have next to no trouble finding friends in China as well.

Unsurprisingly, though, Sadness’s thoughts were a lot more somber. Indeed, she agreed that video calls were a thing, but they were definitely not a replacement for being able to talk to someone in person, without the need for a screen or the issues that came with electronics. In addition, making friends, especially when they held different values and spoke in a different language, was going to be a lot more difficult; Riley would have to learn a lot about the Chinese culture, as well as reach a conversational level in the Chinese language. All in all, Sadness felt it in her heart: the process of adapting would be more difficult than it seemed.

Both Joy and Sadness neglected to remark one thing, though: it seemed as though Riley didn’t want to stay awake. Once the processed memory was sent back to its storage over at one of the numerous Memory Lanes, the Consciousness Screen showed a pure black view, indicating that Riley had fully closed her eyes.

However, once the remaining three emotions of Riley’s personal team woke up, got ready for the day and joined Joy and Sadness at the console, that was to change for good.


	2. Core Memories and the Consciousness Grid

The next emotion to take his seat at the console, after Joy and Sadness, was Fear, and his individuality made him quite the polar opposite of them both.

Unlike the two ladies, who, despite not being exactly human, still mostly looked the part, Fear was barely recognizable as one. His body was very slender, making him nearly as tall as Joy, with rather short arms and legs, and it looked as though his eyeballs were displaced from his string-like head, hanging on top of his body like two large bulbs. His nose also hung from his head, forming a complete body picture that just screamed “tendrils”. In the place of hair, he had a long, winding and spiraling purple strand, more reminiscent of an antenna than hair, and two “eyebrows” that floated above his body. It looked as though the color of Fear’s particles was light purple, while his eyes were dark purple.

For the proverbial occasion, Fear had dressed somewhat formally, if in an out-of-date manner. He wore dark purple pants with a proper belt and a white shirt with layered sleeves, and the only decoration that adored his body was a red bowtie. Of course, his clothes were tailored to his specific, nerve-like body shape, but on a human, they could evoke any number of eras from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s — definitely out of place for an emotion working for a modern teenage girl.

That being said, Fear’s entrance was anything _but_ formal. Even from a distance, having just ran out of his room and to the front of Headquarters, he shouted out loud: “How long have we been flying? Have we been flying for too long? We’re going to run out of fuel! We’re going to crash!”

This, alone, alerted the ladies to his presence, and they turned to face him; however, they quickly found themselves turning back, as he plunged for the console, taking the seat to Joy’s left, and pushed buttons around, turning the console color from a pale blue to purple. Thus, in turn, the view on the Consciousness Screen, too, changed radically; now, it seemed as though Riley was wide awake and frantically looking around, though she still remained seated. Even her parents, as brief as the glimpses of them the emotions got, seemed mildly worried.

“Relax!” Joy reassuringly spoke as she moved over to hold his hands, preventing him from punching more and more into the console. “I’m sure,” she continued, “that they calculated the right amount of fuel for the flight. If they didn’t, don’t you think we would be hearing about crashes a lot more? However, what we _do_ see is articles saying that flying is the safest mode of transportation!”

“Safest! I like safe.” Fear said, his voice sounding as though his previous outburst hadn’t happened at all. The emotions, in general, had a rather terrible habit of acting in the moment, completely disregarding what happened previously.

Seeing the elation, Joy returned to her seat, considering it a job well done; while Fear was calmed down, he would serve a rather important role in the mind at the present time, and that was ensuring that Riley would be awake for the landing, which couldn’t be that far away by now. Meanwhile, Sadness only stared blankly at the two, seeing as this wasn’t really a matter that directly concerned her, and in general, she thought that some moments were best left without her involvement.

However, the troubles Joy would have with the emotion team had just begun, and the last two emotions were definitely the “hardest to tame”, so to say.

Signs of their frustration could already be heard, even before they appeared in person. It seemed as though one of them had splashed water all over her face and groaned to herself, making sure to groan into the towel so as to not cause a further disturbance. Already, she knew that it was going to be far from a pleasant day, with her preparations interrupted and Riley still en route to an impossibly distant location, and as she stepped down to meet the emotions already present by Riley, she was definitely not having the time of her life.

This emotion was Disgust, and she cared about looks big time. As far as her body build went, she could best be described as curvy, even more so than Riley’s mother. She was shorter than Fear, yet taller than Sadness, with light green skin particles and dark green hair and eyes. Her hair was shorter than that of Joy’s or Sadness’s, only reaching the top of her neck, and in the front, was cut right at her eye on one side, while being brushed away from the other. Her eyes, on the other hand, were emphasized by eyelashes that stretched past her face, not being limited to neat little accessories like they would be in the human world.

Disgust’s outfit was rather revealing, further accentuating her curves, but not _too_ revealing, as she definitely hated those who appeared to be, in her own words, “all body and no brain”. Her dark green jeans were about as short as they could get, and most of her legs were covered by thin black leggings, topped off with purple flats. Her top was also rather lackluster and small, lacking any sleeves and exposing her midriff — and in turn, revealing that she didn’t have a belly button. The top was white, decorated with dark green outlines of splatters.

The sides of her head, where her ears would normally go, were decorated with a pair of thin, yet rather large metallic earrings, bent to form a “D” shape. Her neck was covered by a purple see-through scarf, placing it somewhere between stylish and practical for a colder day. Finally, she had donned a pair of white, latex gloves, so as to not come in contact with any germs or other, well, disgusting stuff; the gloves wrapped around her rather tightly, making some of her purple nail polish bleed through as a visible smear from the inside. It seemed as though today, she had decided to forego any makeup; given what she was alerted to, it was rather obvious as to why.

“Fear, I swear to Riley,” she spoke up, “if you do something like this to me again, I… why are we sitting around like that?” In the middle of a scathing threat, her attention was suddenly caught by the Consciousness Screen, which showed Riley, still seated in her usual place on the plane, doing absolutely nothing and very likely being bored out of her mind — quite obviously from her own point of view, but still recognizable to Disgust. “Now this — _this_ is completely unacceptable…” she muttered to herself. 

Normally at this point, she would simply take her seat by the console and hit the buttons on it, just like the other emotions. However, as it stood right now, Sadness was sitting in her usual seat. Disgust thus walked over to the seat and loudly cleared her throat, and Sadness, not wanting to be a bother to anyone, scooted further over to the far right, allowing Disgust to take the now free seat.

Disgust then proceeded to enter her own input to the console, and as she did, Riley instantly reacted. The view from the Consciousness Screen didn’t indicate much, but from the sounds, one could infer that Riley was reaching into her schoolbag, on her back and crunched up against the economy class seat, and trying to pick up something from the bag — in fact, the only thing that was there, at the moment.

“Disgust, what are you doing? Our tablet is still out of power…” Sadness pointed out, but Disgust wasn’t exactly one to listen; if what Sadness said was true, then she would have to see for herself. Sadness, in turn, quietly conceded; not being properly heard was an issue she had with all her coworkers and not just Joy.

Finally, with enough struggling and frustration from Riley’s side, the thing Disgust had made her take out was right on the panoramic Consciousness Screen.

It was a rather thick tablet computer, which, rather oddly for the type of smart device people were accustomed with, didn’t have a touch screen at all. Instead, one would have to make do with two keyboards that were attached to its side; in order to use the tablet, you had to hold it like a gaming controller and use your thumbs to use the keyboards, which were labeled in the familiar QWERTY order. There were also two directional pads below each keyboard, so that the tablet could also be used for games. The tablet itself had black bezels, while the side keyboards were a light blue one on the left and a light orange one on the right

Any onlookers who saw Riley’s tablet would most likely confuse it for something else; a gaming console that was particularly popular throughout the world at the time. They were absolutely right to see it that way; however, it wasn’t _actually_ that console, but rather, a Chinese knockoff product designed after it, that Riley’s father had gotten for her via connections in the company he worked for. Nevertheless, Riley had gotten used to the device and its idiosyncrasies, and it had become the emotions’ favorite too. In fact, each of them had an Imagination-based tablet just like it for their own personal use.

That being said, it didn’t take much fiddling for Disgust to realize that what Sadness had said was true. As far as Riley’s own, “outside world” tablet went, no matter how much Riley pushed the button on the edge of the right side keyboard or how long she held it, the device wouldn’t turn on at all, and its screen remained a pale grey; she must have drained its battery during the fourteen-hour flight, before she got bored and fell asleep for a rather poor rest.

“Well, that’s not happening.” Disgust conceded, before making Riley stow the tablet in her schoolbag again; evidently, the teenage girl was struggling as she did.

“That being said… there’s gotta be another way to entertain ourselves!” Joy suggested, not wanting to see a coworker brought down by a simple misfortune. 

“Like what?” Disgust shot back.

“Like not accepting the horrid conditions that we’ve been put through!” a male emotion from upstairs shouted out, before beginning to descend, thus completing the team of emotions that took care of Riley.

This emotion was Anger, and his body shape, like Fear’s, also trended towards the stylized side. He was by far the shortest emotion, only reaching up to Sadness’s neck, but what he lacked in height, he more than made up for in width, thus resembling an oversized brick in the process. Also like Fear, he had no hair to speak of, and his eyes also took up most of his upper body. Of note was the fact that unlike the other emotions, he completely lacked a nose or a neck. His skin particles were dark red, while his eyes were bright red.

Out of the emotions, Anger took his job the most seriously, even more so than Joy, and reflecting that, he dressed to impress — or at least, as much as he could while still remaining in the bounds of male fashion. His outfit looked rather simple in comparison with the rest: dark brown pants, a dark brown overcoat over a white shirt, and black shoes, finished off with a tie, with red and white vertical stripes. Like with Fear, and indeed, like with all the remaining emotions, the clothes that he wore also looked perfectly tailored to his body, despite each of them having a unique physique.

That being said, while Anger certainly saw his own remark as serious, the others did not. “What conditions? Seems pretty normal to me.” Joy even had the gall to ask, as she watched Anger descend and take the last remaining seat by the console, to the far left.

“Well, if the Spirit of Imagination had given you any wits instead of just eyes, you would realize!” Anger shot back.

“Woah!” Disgust suddenly stepped in between Joy and Anger. “We all have huge eyes; that’s just the way we are. Does that mean we are all morons who can’t see the real picture? Like, be serious now!”

“I suppose you are.” Anger commented, having none of the peacemaking attitude.

“Being dumb is so difficult…” Sadness lamented, sighing and planting her face at the console, which ended up turning it light blue, and thus, making Riley herself look down. Of course, Sadness being Sadness and not wanting to affect Riley more than necessary, she quickly sat straight up again.

“Hey! Cheer up, will you?” This time, Joy stepped in and tried her best to lighten the mood. “I’m sure there’s something to be happy about! Like… something has gotta come up soon enough, right?”

Anger, of course, was not one to miss even Joy herself lacking enthusiasm, and shot back: “Like what?”

A whole awkward minute passed, with each and every emotion trying to think of something that Riley could feel — that she hadn’t already felt on the flight. However, they came up empty-handed, blankly staring at the console and each other, and the console itself, after not receiving input from any emotion, turned back to its original color, indicating a mild boredom and indifference in Riley.

However, this minute was not to last, as soon enough, the captain of the flight delivered a typical announcement in his typical tone: “Good afternoon, passengers. This is the captain of flight UA 835 speaking. The local time is 13:28, and we are about to land in Shanghai as scheduled in about five minutes. The local temperature is 7 degrees Celsius, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Please note that for your own safety, your seatbelt must be fastened while the ‘fasten seatbelt’ light is on…”

“We’re landing!” Joy shouted out, as she spun around in her chair. “China, here we come!”

“Wait a minute!” Disgust suddenly realized. “We’re not _actually_ ready, are we? How are we going to get our luggage back? And also… how far away from the airport was our new house, again?” Being in a state of confusion, herself, she started entering codes to the console, trying to bring up a more detailed map of Shanghai.

However, it seemed as though nothing came up, once she did so. If Riley was told about this new location, or, for that matter, anything about the city beyond where it is in the world, it would seem that she already forgot about it. Naturally, the emotions’ next option would be to use the intermediate device, the tablet that Riley insisted that she take to the plane, but they already knew that it was out of question.

“Look!” Fear called out, as Disgust became frustrated. “The most important thing is that we follow Mom and Dad and don’t let them out of our sight. If we lose them… if we lose them…!” Suddenly, he became terrified of the very prospect he was talking about, and as he, himself, motioned to the console, he made Riley squirm in her seat; if she was unbound by the seat belt, she would certainly have already tightly hugged either Mom or Dad.

“We won’t lose them. Good advice, though!” Joy spoke, nudging towards Fear’s side.

As the emotions pointlessly squabbled, none of them giving in, the plane slowly descended through the air. A multitude of effects was immediately noticeable: the air pressure rose, making everyone in the plane, including the Andersens, breathe more deeply, and the turbulence continued shaking the plane, waking the other sleepy passengers up.

Finally, the plane broke through the cloud level, and the emotions were treated to the pretty shapes of the Shanghai highrises for the first time. The view from the middle seat, as opposed to the window seat, was rather hard to fully appreciate, but nevertheless, it fully captivated the elements of Imagination in Riley’s mind. Joy was quick to hit the console to capture the memory, and soon enough, it rolled in.

However, this memory was different; whereas the other memories, already in the winding tube, were almost lifelike and looked rather dull in the vibrant world of the mind, this was a Core Memory, which appeared in an entirely different tube, which didn’t have nearly enough loops.

Core Memories were a special type of memory, indeed, as they had a higher concentration of Imagination than the rest, and therefore, couldn’t be processed or recalled. Instead, their purpose in the mind, to put it simply, was to give Riley everything that made her unique; her personality, her interests, her skills, her deepest desires and darkest fears. Without Core Memories, Riley would be nothing but a blank slate, unable to say anything interesting about herself at a party or social gathering.

Given this, Core Memories were not intended for the Memory Lanes; instead, their dedicated place was high above Headquarters and other structures in the mind. The emotions only got to watch it briefly, its shine unmistakable for anything else, before it shot upwards in the tube. From there, it would find its place in the mind and shoot beams of light towards the other Core Memories nearby. These were known as lightlines, and once they settled, the Core Memory would become a part of the Consciousness Grid.

The Consciousness Grid, one could say, was the single biggest and most unique structure in the mind, visible from Headquarters and virtually everywhere else, all the time, and unable to be mistaken for anything else. During the day, it was far from impressive, being nothing more than a barely visible geometric pattern that fractured the sky. However, in the night, the spectacle of Core Memories and the lightlines connecting them was a sight prettier than any possible night sky, in the real world or even in one’s wildest fantasies.

In the meantime, Joy’s input continued to influence Riley, and odds were, it would do so for long enough for Joy to take a quick break. She thus launched herself up from the console seat and ran up the spiral catwalk, which could be seen to be much longer from this vantage point and lead all the way to the roof. She really wanted to see where, exactly, in the Consciousness Grid would the new Core Memory land; to her, it was critical information, as it would come to shape Riley’s personality in China. While the catwalk’s shape annoyed all the other emotions, Joy found the waving paths to be intriguing and unique, and ran until she reached the very top.

Once she got there, she was greeted to the exterior of at least some of Headquarters. The building was pearly white, with the main “bulb”, at the top, being rather organic and curvy, while at the same time having lots of spires sticking out in varying sizes, making for a fractal pattern. From this particular point of view, the tower that held this main bulb up wasn’t visible, but having taken trips outside of Headquarters, Joy knew that the entire structure resembled a princess tower; fairytales were one of Riley’s earliest passions, and it seemed that nothing else could replace it.

That is, until Joy followed the newly created Core Memory with her eyes and realized that it would take its presence directly above Headquarters.

The science of how the mind’s geography aligned with the importance of its structures was pretty simple: the closer to Headquarters something was, the more important it was. Therefore, to say the least, a Core Memory taking its place above Headquarters was a rather big deal. Joy wasn’t even sure how she was going to break this news; it seemed as though everything about Riley was subject to change, and the other emotions wouldn’t take to it lightly.

In the end, Joy decided to take her precious time. She watched the entire process of the Core Memory connecting to the Consciousness Grid, and though the daytime sky made it difficult to see fine details, the mere fact that Joy had to look directly up was plenty telling. She didn’t even dare blink for those moments; even though she had seen the process countless times, she still didn’t want to miss a single thing.

Finally, once it looked like the process was finished, Joy descended back to the console as quickly as she could, outpacing the so-called “wind of change” that ensued once the Core Memory was in place. Glancing at the Consciousness Screen, she could infer the plane was actually aligned with the runway and about to touch down and taxi, a process which would start in a few seconds starting from now.

It almost seemed as though Joy had skipped the “boring” part of the skirmish and gone right to the interesting part, and wouldn’t have much time to act. However, with any luck, it would be _just_ enough to calm the others’ worries down. 

“What was it, Joy?” Fear asked, right as she returned. “Why do you have that unnerving smile? Did the Core Memory permanently burn through your face, burning in the smile? _Red alert!_ Joy has been incapacitated by the Core Memory!” He was known for jumping to foregone conclusions without thinking through them first, and furthermore, being frightened by them, himself.

_And boy, do the worries come,_ Joy thought to herself. “Absolutely nothing!” she spoke, not much on her mind other than calming the worries, and immediately afterwards, began concocting a lie, her expression becoming an insincere one almost immediately: “The Core Memory… danced far away, and I am happy because life in China won’t be that different from life in America after all! I…”

Before she could say anything more, though, she glanced above herself; it seemed as though her attempt to cover it up didn’t last too long.

The wind of change was rather merciless and relentless. While the doors to the emotions’ dorms, and most likely, the dorms themselves were unchanged, and so was the console, Consciousness Screen, the tube holding memories and everything else required for Riley’s mind to work, virtually all the other details around the emotions began changing. All they could do at this point was bid the fairytale-like look of Headquarters a final farewell, as the unseen force swept through the building, transforming it into a highrise much like the ones on the Core Memory itself, with angular halls replacing curved ones and solid walls turning into ones made of glass, making the outside view more clear.

Finally, as terrifying as it was, the unseen force swept all the way down, taking a much shorter trip than anyone expected. It looked like the variety of chairs was also untouched; the emotions could still replace their usual console chairs with them if they felt discomfort.

“So, you meant to tell us… that the Core Memory took its place _directly above Headquarters_?” Disgust spat out. “You filthy liar! That has got to be…”

However, before she could finish her sentence, the plane finally touched down and began taxiing, shaking Headquarters quite a bit and interrupting her thought, as well everything else on Riley’s mind at the time.


	3. Navigation through Language and Smoke

As the plane rolled down the runway at frightening speeds, Fear was really the only emotion actively using the console, holding onto it as soon as the plane touched down. The others merely watched from their seats, all of which had slightly jumped up, before rolling towards the console; once they did, though, the others were sure to use the console to push themselves away from it, at least a bit.

This rolling and slowing down lasted longer than Riley’s emotions expected, and what was worse, the plane didn’t fully slow down at first, but instead, began taxiing, making the loops through the strips of the airport, with no clear end to the car-like driving of the plane — or the shining of the “fasten your seatbelt” light.

Joy was slowly getting anxious. She desperately wanted Riley to just… leap from the seat and run across the plane until she got to the airport, and then run across the airport until she got outside and greeted the open air of Shanghai, and then run across Shanghai until she got to her new home, and then run some more, just for good measure. To Joy, China was the biggest playground that Riley could get, with lots and lots of land to explore and more than a billion friends to make — quite literally.

However, at the same time, Joy wasn’t one to lose her head, and still remembered that Riley needed to tag along her parents, as the danger of getting lost in an unfamiliar environment was immeasurably more real. Especially with Fear by her side, Joy would need to observe full caution, and would probably have to save the running idea until Riley was actually familiar with the surroundings, like where her new home and school were, which could take a week or two. But by then, Joy knew that Riley would be running across in excitement, making new friends left and right.

Finally, as Joy was pondering these thoughts, the little sight through the window stopped changing, and the plane came to a full stop. Soon enough, other hallmarks of disembarking from the plane followed, such as the light for the seatbelt going off; as soon as Joy saw it, she hit the console, and Riley was unbuckled and stood up in a heartbeat.

“Hey, there, slow down! We’re not leaving yet!” Riley’s mother was quick to point out, and likewise, her father remained seated for the time being; although, both of them had also unbuckled their seat belts.

“Well, that’s a shame…” Sadness spoke from the far left, being the next one to use the console after Joy, who only groaned at how unfair life was, sometimes. In turn, Joy decided to at least counter Sadness’s move by injecting some positivity and excitement into the console, as well; she couldn’t let Riley stay feeling down for long.

“Aww… can it be soon, though?” Riley asked her mother, as the whiplash of emotional input came through to her.

“We’ll be ready when we are ready!” Riley’s father commented, not realizing how stupid he sounded at first. Indeed, he was a bit of a carefree spirit, just like Riley herself, and after a while, he managed to make it through to the plane’s aisle, where he was able to access the drawer above the family and pick out a few bags. “But regardless, here’s your luggage.” he finished.

Riley herself hadn’t really brought much, except for her schoolbag containing her favorite Chinese tablet, as she didn’t perceive enough emotional attachment. However, her parents wanted to pack as much as they possibly could get away with, and therefore, had full, rather heavy bags of both check-in and hand luggage. That, however, was still very, _very_ far from all the belongings that the family had collected over two decades, making the emotions wonder how the rest of the stuff was transported.

This was a common occurrence among the emotions: overthinking something that had already been discussed. After all, they would need to feel the knowledge more viscerally, and the only way that they knew how was to repeat it, over and over again, until it was as obvious as the color of the sky.

“That can”t be _everything_! What about everything _else_?” Disgust thus asked, once again punching code after code, seemingly to recall a sequence of memories in various forms of being processed. Some of those were auditory: little clips of Riley’s father explaining, in layman’s terms, about folks at his company, who were able to grant him a shipment across the ocean to ensure a smooth moving experience.

The other memories were photographic, depicting the barren home that the Andersens left. For their last days in Minnesota, only the most necessary essentials were kept around, and everything else was stuffed away into wodden boxes, which were then taken out by company folk and went on their long journey. They had a head start of about a month, meaning that they would arrive just in time, and therefore, with any luck, the Andersens could begin unpacking immediately.

Lastly, there was a photographic memory of the yellow minivan, the Andersens’ favorite all-purpose vehicle, being left behind in a Chicago parking lot, with Riley’s father handing over the keys to unfamiliar people. This was a memory from just yesterday, and therefore, the van would also come in rather late, but it would be making its way there, too.

“All of this looks to be fine,” Anger pointed out, “but all this stuff will need to go _somewhere_. Do we have any details on that?”

“Yeah… I don’t think we do.” Disgust had to concede. For completeness’s sake, she tried to recall something about Anger’s inquiry, but came up empty-handed.

The only semi-certainty that Riley’s emotions had, at the time, was that they would be living in an apartment, not a house. However, even then, Dad was known to slip up and refer to it as a “house”, confounding any and all expectations. There were definitely _wrong_ assumptions to make — for example, that it would be a medieval castle or a gingerbread house — but there was no memory they could recall to set the record straight.

As the typing on the console ceased, and the playback of memories did together with it, stuff was happening on the outside world as well. However, it was nothing terribly exciting: after all this time, the Andersens were still struggling to get out, as the plane, which seemed to be nearly full, had people streaming from all sides, desperate to be the first to get out.

“Ugh!” Disgust groaned, as she was inevitably forced to pay attention to the Consciousness Screen again. “Can these people learn a bit of order?”

“What if… they’re excited?” Joy retaliated.

“_I’d_ surely be excited if I were trapped in a box for half a day and could _finally_ get out.” Anger growled.

“No, no — excited about China! How many of these people, you reckon, are visiting for the first time?” Joy continued defending her own point.

Unfortunately for her, looking around on the Consciousness Screen, Sadness mostly saw Asian faces, and concluded: “I think many of them are actually returning...”

This was a common type of deadlock, and Joy had no means to resolve it. Thankfully, just then, as though a magic wand had been waved, the Andersens were finally able to step out of their chairs and, luggage in their hands, began walking along the length of the plane, before marching straight through the door, bringing a whole new slew of problems.

Appropriately for a long-distance flight, Riley came across one of the “fancier” ways to connect the plane to the terminal, with an entire corridor, and Disgust appreciated the comfort, which wasn’t exactly comparable to getting out through stairs and into the open air straight ahead. After all, the air around was…

“Wait a minute!” Disgust suddenly exclaimed. “What about the smog? How are we even going to breathe? Does anyone have a gas mask?“

It was a very rare moment in the mind, indeed, as Joy could actually use her Imagination for a work-related purpose. She thus let herself Imagine a dark green gas mask with black patterns and a purple respirator — one that would match Disgust’s general aesthetic and fashion style — and then handed it over to Disgust. “Here!’ she said as she did. 

“Why, yes, thank you. Indeed, this is a matter of poisonous radiation that could _kill us all_.” Disgust replied, donning the gas mask; as she put on the respirator, her voice became rather muffled, but still audible. 

At first, she regretted the decision. Even though the gas mask _looked_ stylish and in a matching color, the presence of a gas mask, first and foremost, made her look less someone who cared about her appearance and more like a Chernobyl survivor — one with very bad safety practices, one should note, given the exposed skin at her midriff and upper arms. However, at this time, Disgust’s desire to avoid physical poisoning, or at least look like she would be able to, overruled any sort of comment that she didn’t look “fashionable” or “stylish”.

As this all happened, Riley continued following her parents around the terminal. One of the first sights that greeted her, right outside the plane and in the fancy corridor, was one that was familiar to a frequent flyer, but nevertheless exciting to Riley: a poster, taking up the entire height of the corridor and a good chunk of the width, welcoming tourists, expatriates and returners alike to Shanghai, as well as informing them, both directly and indirectly, of how friendly the city was.

“Woah!” all the emotions called out, eyeing every single detail of the poster, as well as racing to see who can fixate it in Riley’s memory first.

Then, a slightly more irritating part of the arrival procedure followed: customs checks. The Andersens were separated from each other, being “processed” in parallel, and that made Fear visibly nervous, but at the same time, confident, as he understood the necessity of the process.

“Didn’t we already go through checks at home? I mean…” Disgust questioned, before realizing that looking at Riley’s passport was also looking at her own appearance, which she prided on maintaining. “Nice...” she uttered.

Unlike her parents, Riley had muted blue eyes and dirty blonde hair; however, in her later life, she didn’t particularly like the combination, and instead, came to China in a very light lavender dye job. This confused the customs officer, but in all other respects, this looked to be the same girl, and the matter passed. The length of the hair was on the shorter side, longer than Sadness’s but shorter than Joy’s, and the only decoration was a dark lavender headband. To complete the outfit, Riley had donned her favorite yellow jacket, brown pants and white and red tennis shoes.

As she grew, eventually, Riley would have to confront her curves and feminine side; the effects hadn’t fully settled yet, but they were on the verge of doing so. However, something inside her mind kept pushing the idea away, and wanted her to go for tomboyish outfits for the time being. In fact, said something was visible outside the windows of Headquarters, but that was a story for another time.

While Disgust was pondering these and similar ideas, Anger decided to answer her question, even though she was no longer looking for an answer. “Since one of us clearly can’t take her eyes off of Riley, might as well cut to the chase: we did, and it was every bit awful as it was—”

This time, Anger found himself interrupted by Fear. “Completely necessary!” the slender emotion chimed in. “How would you like it if terrorists sent the plane crashing into Pearl Harbor? _How would you?_”

“You little bastard! I was onto a _thing_!” Anger blew up.

“And _my_ thing is more important!” Fear countered, and before they knew it, the two male emotions were in a fierce deadlock of power. 

“Look! Guys! You’re both right!” Joy pointed out, noticing the warfare between the two. “And neither of your thoughts is really ‘more important’—”

“Than yours. Got it.” Anger finished the sentence for Joy, understanding how she usually dealt with such inconveniences.

“That’s not what I meant at all! You’d better take that back!” Joy’s expression and pose suddenly twisted, becoming more reminiscent of that of Disgust, who was merely shaking her head throughout this entire encounter.

“Nope! And did I mention you’re so funny when you’re ticked off?” Anger pointed out.

While three of the emotions were being nuisances as usual and Disgust kept addressing Riley’s body to herself, taking mental notes, Sadness took it upon herself to go through the “boring” parts of customs checks; namely, making sure that Riley provided the officials with documents that she carried around, and therefore, didn’t get in any trouble. It was a thankless job, but Sadness felt both the obligation and the satisfaction in doing it.

However, once that was done with and not much remained of it other than memories on the shelf-like tube, the Andersens had to move on to what would perhaps come to be known as their least favorite part of their airport experience: the luggage roulette.

It was truly exhausting; looking for your own check-in bag, knowing that it’s not that different from the rest, barring the identification tags, as well as that it may take a long time for it to even come up at all. For the emotions, perhaps the best comparison that they could make to a memory of Riley’s was that of her, waiting for her parents to pick her up in the rain, looking at every passing car and thinking that they started to look the same, barring the license plates.

“If anything that Mom or Dad brought with them is damaged, I swear to Riley…” Disgust spoke, still having her gas mask on.

“We’ll buy some new stuff!” Joy finished the thought for Disgust, trying to get her hopes up, as well as boost the general morale in Headquarters.

Sadness, however, was looking to frame it in a different way. “And we’ll have to spend money on it, to say nothing of the fact that our old stuff will still be lost…”

To put it simply, that was one of those thoughts that Joy couldn’t tolerate, at all. She could deal with how obnoxious the others got at times, and for the most part, they all were integral to the formation of Riley as a person. Anger would always be there to right the wrongs, Fear was nothing if not prepared for absolutely everything and Disgust injected the self-consciousness needed for Riley to function in the social world.

Yet, Sadness was an entirely different beast. It wasn’t so much that _Riley_ needed her — on the contrary, she was a happy girl, and that meant that Joy had to step in so that Sadness wouldn’t do anything horribly wrong. However, seeing that lack of purpose, Joy couldn’t help but feel pity, and over time, the two formed a bond unlike that of any other pair of emotions. Instead of Riley, it was _Joy_ who needed her, and more likely than not, the reverse held as well.

At least, Joy hoped so; there was no means for her to share any of _Sadness’s_ thoughts, and therefore, be completely sure. However, the relationship between the two looked to be roughly on the right track, and as long as that was the case, nothing else mattered.

“Let’s… not focus on that, shall we?” Joy thus asked Sadness, as nicely as she could. “Why don’t we just follow along and… look for anything that might be familiar to us!”

By this point, largely due to Fear, Riley was pacing around from one end of the “room” to another, still trying to keep her parents in sight, but at the same time, looking at the rolling luggage and getting more and more nervous as she failed to spot anything that was familiar to her.

“Where is it… where is it… it’s lost forever!” Fear suddenly let out.

“It’s not ‘lost forever’,” Disgust countered, “it might just be doomed to rot in an airline’s warehouse until they throw it away… I don’t know the specifics, but if it’s not coming our way at this very moment, its fate is far worse than ‘lost forever’.”

“Now that you mention it… yeah, that’s even worse!” Fear reacted.

“Will you stop it?!” Anger and Joy both shouted out simultaneously, before looking at each other, rather confused as both of them had had the exact same idea.

The rest of the emotions got caught up in the moment as well, and Fear momentarily stopped using the console. As a result, Riley also stopped in her tracks, instead simply awkwardly glancing at the luggage that kept rolling in.

And then, as if by a stroke of luck, it happened. Riley herself didn’t really recognize what her parents had come into Chicago with, but by their reaction and movement, it was obvious that it was exactly it. Her mother was the first to pick up her luggage, and some ten seconds later, her father followed, making for a happy family that was ready to move forward and establish themselves in China.

“There we go!” Joy called out, as Fear sighed in relief and the others showed similar signs of readiness. “Now, let’s go!”

“Alright! Let’s!” Fear responded, letting Joy drive for the time being.

And thus, the family strode, as though they had been in this place a million times before; in reality, it was only because it was rather easy to follow the signs, all of which had been labeled in both English and Chinese. As Riley followed her parents around, she only got to take in the rapidly changing sceneries for brief moments at a time.

“Aren’t you excited?” her mother asked, out of the blue, in the middle of a pathway that seemed to open to… the view of a highway?

This gave Fear another good startle, making him think that structural collapse, and therefore, the family crashing down onto the streets and being run over seconds later, was imminent. However, Joy was still at her position and ready to take it all the way to Riley’s new home.

“You know I am!” Riley shouted out, ever-so-slightly stuttering. “I’m going to make so many friends at school, and everything is going to work out just fine!”

“Now these are words to live by.” her mother answered.

“Touché.” Joy only commented, while all the other emotions looked noticeably disgruntled by Mom’s remark.

The family walk eventually took the Andersens to a subway station, on what appeared to be Line 2 of the Shanghai Metro. Riley’s father almost immediately located and started looking at a meter-tall map on the side of a wall, and after some fiddling with scribblings on a piece of paper with a printed-out map (he had been advised specifically against using the phone’s GPS, due to some local restrictions), he was able to pinpoint the precise journey the Andersens would need to take in order to get home.

“Alright, I think this will take us one transfer, and then, you’ll be ready to see your home!” he commented, before moving on to the ticket booth to get some passes for the whole family.

Joy kept smiling throughout the whole ordeal: getting tickets, descending the escalator and admiring the subway station itself. However, soon thereafter, the train itself arrived, and the Andersens were faced with one of the more unpleasant parts of the trip: being packed like fish, very tightly with nowhere to sit down, as the train marched through tunnels that looked so much alike, station after station.

“When I was informed that 1.4 billion people lived in China, I didn’t expect it to be _that_ many.” Disgust commented.

“That does _not_ look like billions or even millions and you know it.” Anger responded, even though he wasn’t exactly asked to.

“No points, Sherlock! It’s called hyperbole, okay?” Disgust shot back.

At these words, as well as quiet groaning from Sadness, Joy momentarily dropped the controls. There was no silver lining to be found here; for this moment at least, she would have to relinquish her position.

As hinted by the “transfer” remark, one train became another, coming in just as fast and no less crowded than the last one. The repetitiveness of the situation started driving the emotions mad, but in the end, they all agreed that the situation sucked and kept quiet until the second train’s arrival at its destination.

Nearing the journey’s end, though, Anger suggested to Disgust: “You know, maybe you don’t look stylish at all in that.”

At these words, Disgust pulled out a pocket mirror to look at herself; indeed, the gas mask obscured all the stylish and beautiful parts of her face, making her look more like an alien than anything. “Yeah. Ugh…” She began tearing the gas mask off of her own face, and it made squeaky noises as it came off. “Just… put that thing where you pulled it out from…” she told Joy, handing her the mask.

Of course, Imagined objects didn’t exactly come from anywhere when they appeared, nor did they go anywhere when they disappeared. When Joy touched the gas mask, it took about a second to disintegrate, spreading particles of Imagination all over, but within a few more moments, those particles were gone, without any telling where the gas mask went.

“Alright! Our new home, here we go! This time, for real for real!” Joy shouted out, pulling at the console’s levers and pushing buttons once again, making Riley run up the destination station’s escalator.

“And if it’s not there, something has gone horribly wrong.” Fear said, as though it were a completely normal thought to ponder.

“How can you suggest that a building can just disappear? Let alone, one that other people are living in?” Anger pointed out.

“Yeah… no offense, but even I… nevermind…” Sadness tried to comment, before her own self-consciousness kicked in, making her drop her own thought.

Once Riley had made it to ground level, she waited for her parents to ascend, while taking the time to admire all the other people that were coming up. These were her neighborhood, all made up of potential friends. The possibilities unfolding before her were limitless, provided that she got to her home and figured out where everything else needed for her to function was.

In due time, her parents also ascended, and the three were ready to proceed. However, once they opened the door outside, they were faced with a gust of air polluted with smoke and other types of dust, and instinctively, they all began coughing up.

This sort of smell reverberated to Headquarters as well, and the emotions, caught off-guard, coughed as well. It didn’t take Disgust too long to realize _one_ way how it all could have been prevented, though.

“Anger, how dare you!” she pointed out, glaring at the perpetrator from the other side of the console.

Through coughing, Anger smiled. After all, he lived to irritate.


	4. The New Apartment

“Well, there we go! Good ole fourteenth floor,” Riley’s father spoke, looking at the high-rises of the residential district that he and his family had just arrived to.

Though the sky was white as a pearl, bringing many a green memory to Riley’s memory shelves, the rest of the landscape managed to surprise her emotions quite well. It looked far from the typical picture of China that Riley could find on the Internet; the emotions quickly figured that Shanghai, one of China’s three “major people gathering places” (as put eloquently by Joy the other day), wanted to look much nicer to tourists, even those who got this far into the city.

On the street, there were quite a few trees, and one could even forget the skyscrapers surrounding the area. These were large, residential skyscrapers, but even they weren’t as dark and foreboding as it would seem, with the fourteenth floor being about as far as they went. Instead of concrete, they were covered with distinct plates: dark brown for the bottom two floors, white for the top two and light brown for the rest.

In addition, on some of the buildings, perhaps even a majority, there were even shops on the ground floor; that being said, there was no real reading what the shops were for, as it was all in Chinese. Yet, given any sort of translator or translation tool, Riley would be able to figure it out and start calling this place home. In fact, there wasn’t anything preventing her from doing the latter _right now_… or so each emotion mused before realizing that Riley’s favorite Chinese tablet was still out of power.

“Well, welcome to China, I suppose…” Joy muttered, greeting everyone, though enthusiasm was clearly lacking in her own core.

However, while she was still trying her earnest to keep the spirits up at least somewhat, the others had already gotten enough of a taste of it all to jump and conclusions, starting with Disgust. “We’re supposed to _live_ here? Like, this is our residence. Our life’s core.” she snidely commented, still coughing from the impression of pollution.

“You’ll just have to deal with it.” Anger remarked in return.

Sadness, too, had her own take on the matter. “I don’t know… if you lay down in your bed, you might even forget it all…” she suggested.

“I’m sorry, what’s that thought?” Disgust interrupted, not paying much respect to _anything_ coming from the ball of blue. “Do you actively _want_ to get lots and lots of industry dust? Even being outside is too much for me. Even worse, what about that… covert-twenty thing?” Disgust kept coughing throughout the entire sentence; it would seem that the air pollution, even though she didn’t even feel it directly, was too much for her, and the others too, seeing their expressions and breathing manners.

As this discourse went on, Joy, too, kept thinking. Instead of paying attention to the discourse itself, she chose to glance behind herself, noting a small pile of thin metal sheets, knowing what precisely they were for, and at the same time, wondering if anything there was applicable to Riley’s current situation.

“To be fair, I’m not sure… maybe this one…” Having pulled away from the console, Joy flipped through the collection, and shook her head with each one, mulling to herself. “Well, I’ll just have to get some new ones!” she finally said, rounding them all up. She then Imagined a foam covering for the bunch, and then tossed the bundle over her head, in the general direction of the back of Headquarters.

Indeed, Joy would need to approach brightening Riley’s day from a new and creative angle. Yet, the troubles of China notwithstanding, today was proving to be a good day for her, already; she had the chance to use her Imagination twice, and frolicking in the mind was always a pleasure. In addition, the day could just turn out for the better on its own, couldn’t it?

However, while Riley’s situation was definitely salvageable, as far as Joy’s coworkers went, she couldn’t help but think that they were beyond saving. Without the right mentality, she mused, they would always be at odds with each other and with herself.

However, even if friction in the team was to persist, teamwork would absolutely be necessary for the continued wellbeing of Riley. This thought, indeed, was what brought Joy over back to the console and Riley’s current situation.

As she did, the entire environment got darker, a natural consequence of Riley and her parents entering their own building. However, at the point, Anger felt the need to comment on something he saw right before Riley’s entrance: “Why would someone living in a communal apartment like this need fences? Should someone put up fences surrounding the base of Headquarters right now?”

“Oh, shush.” Joy responded, before exclaiming, as she threw herself at the console: “Alright, if it’s our life, then I’m gonna live it to the fullest!”

“Race me to the top!” Riley suddenly flew forward, with her parents becoming but a distant memory.

“Woah, not so fast! We still have to bring our stuff and…” Riley’s mother called, but to no avail, as the ball of sunshine was already running, as fast as her legs took her. Taking flights of stairs upward was quite a different experience from running out in the open, and sometimes, she needed to hold onto the rail to not fly off into a wall, but eventually, she got the hang of it, barely being able to contain the excitement in her physical being.

She must have gotten some four or five floors up, though, before she started panting rather heavily.

For a girl her age, Riley was rather physically fit — after all, otherwise she would never had a chance to play in a hockey team. However, the sort of fitness needed for hockey clearly wasn’t very well-suited to running upstairs, and regardless, there was only so much punch that a fourteen-year-old could pack. Eventually, the fatigue crept into every part of Riley’s being, including her emotions at Headquarters.

“How long is this going to take?” Sadness asked, once Riley had slowed down to a crawl.

Joy thought to herself. With how tired Riley had gotten in such a short time period, maybe it was for the best to spare her and just have her take the elevator; indeed, tiring her out while it was still the afternoon was perhaps not the best idea, especially if she were to walk around the city during the evening.

And besides, there wasn’t _that_ much to see out here: there were just windows providing light, doors to other people’s apartments and the stairs themselves. Joy quickly figured that it wasn’t worth it.

“Alright, then it’s time for plan B: the elevator!” she announced, having given the thought enough contemplation.

“You got it!” Fear responded, typing on the console.

After having crawled up to the next floor, Riley hit the elevator button. The elevator took some time to open its doors, and when those doors finally opened, she was greeted to another unpleasant and rather serendipitous surprise: her parents were already inside, wondering why it had stopped. Defeated by the mere sight of those most familiar to her, Riley reluctantly stepped inside, greeting her them once again.

“Don’t stress yourself out there, kiddo! You don’t wanna get a sprained joint or anything, now, do you?” Riley’s father pointed out, noticing her fatigue.

“I’m sorry…” Riley huffed and puffed.

The elevator climb was slow, and one or two floors up, Anger was already starting to get bored by the experience and irritated by the music. “Can someone shut these guys up?” he shouted out.

“Yeah, fair point!” Disgust responded, as though he had been speaking the words of the people.

Fear, on the other hand, didn’t give either of them much of a thought, instead looking towards his own matters. “What if something goes wrong? We could plummet to our deaths!” he spoke, fidgeting.

“And that’s why elevators like this have security systems! If the wire breaks, the elevator will only fall a little before stopping. You really need to stop assuming all the technology works the same way as movies!” Joy spoke, quick to remind him of the laws of reality.

Hearing her response, Fear nodded, and Anger and Disgust only looked at him. To them, he was the same thing, over and over again: easy to be frightened, yet at the same time, easy to have his nerves calmed.

Finally, the elevator stopped whirring and its doors opened, signifying that the Andersens had arrived. The only difference between the fourteenth floor and the others was that there was no more “up” to go from here. In a way, this emphasized the “on top of the world” point that Joy was meaning to have, but the sort of lack of path upwards also could be thought of as depressing; after all, from here, there was nowhere to go but down.

However, while there was not much to see further up, there was still the apartment itself, at exactly the right level. Stepping by one of the doors, Riley’s father fumbled a bit with the keys, but was able to find the right key in about half a minute. “Ah-ha!” he said, managing to unlock the door and let the family inside.

The view inside wasn’t the prettiest, though: in fact, it was very much the dystopia to the almost utopian, if foreign, streets on the outside.

The decorations of the walls and even the ceiling were definitely not something expected in the West; they had these weird Oriental patterns that Riley’s emotions didn’t recognize at a first glance. That being said, even those patterns were slowly starting to chip away: whoever had set this place up must have left it like that for a decade, if not more.

Yet, there was another distinct aspect to it all: communism, or at least, communism as Riley understood it. The identical skyscrapers, each of which filled to the brim with apartments with rudimentary living conditions, just _screamed_ “equality for everyone”, which was the rough spirit permeating the entire country, even though the corporate attitude seemed to conflict it.

The emotions struggled to remember what else they knew about China. Joy even started mumbling to herself: it’s communist, or at least used to be or some thing like that, and it has cheap labor which meant that all your electronic devices are probably made in China. Oh, and that brought with it the Chinese ripoff culture, which is what brought Riley her favorite Chinese tablet.

“Hey, what about our tablet?” Fear suddenly realized, overhearing Joy’s oddly voiced thoughts. “Am I the only one forgetting that it ran out of battery power on the plane?”

“Right!” Joy snapped out of it. “If you please.” she graciously spoke, and let him operate the console.

Riley instantly dropped her schoolbag on the floor, unzipped it and took out her favorite Chinese tablet. She then unzipped the second compartment, finding in there the USB charger for the tablet, and started looking for a plug anywhere on any of the walls; fatigue from running upwards still affected her tremendously, and she had the demeanor of a frightened gazelle.

Luckily, she was able to locate an outlet, which just so happened to be the same plug type as her charger. It also seemed almost serendipitously convenient that the outlet was near a table, so she could just place the tablet there and leave it sitting for a longer time; with both of these conveniences, a wave of satisfaction took over Riley.

“Don’t you just love it when things work out?” Joy commented.

“Alright! The only problem _now_ is that we’ll need to stay for a while and I don’t know if our parents will let us…” Fear reported.

“You’re right! And if they don’t, we’ll have to head out there with no way to entertain ourselves, and…” Though it was rare, Joy did agree with the relatively negative thoughts, and was seriously starting to have second thoughts about the experience in China. “I don’t know how to put it… can someone help me here? Sadness?” She gave a glance towards the blue presence in the corner, but eventually, realized that nobody there would react.

“In this mess of an environment? No way.” Anger responded in her stead, causing Joy to turn around to the other side.

“I wouldn’t put it that way…” she immediately objected.

“Oh, but you would.” Disgust rebutted.

“I’m trying to be positive here!” Joy suddenly shot back. “I’m trying to…” She trailed off, noticing more and more about the Andersens’ new apartment.

There was _some_ furniture left behind by the previous tenants, including the convenient table, but there wasn’t enough to truly call it a _home_; in fact, it looked like Riley would have to sleep in her sleeping bag until at least a proper bed was brought to one of the rooms. As for the kitchen…

“…see what’s in the kitchen! Should we go check there?” Joy finished, making an unexpected suggestion.

“We will have to eat what’s cooked there, so, alright! We might as well.” Fear agreed, and with him and Joy leading the way, Riley instantly left the tablet behind and headed for the kitchen.

Unfortunately for the emotions, what she found was rudimentary, and in fact, many of the appliances were rusted. Granted, Riley, a modern girl, was never taught much about cooking when the culture of takeaways existed, but nevertheless, she _would_ have to eat homemade food cooked by her parents, even if it were on occasion, and therefore, would end up ingesting some of the “rust”.

“This is even worse! Now I just wish I were outside.” Disgust commented, revolted by the sight of the kitchen.

“Yeah, me too.” Anger added.

“At least it all can be repaired, right?” Joy suggested. She was aware of the consensus that the apartment, as it existed right now, was unsalvageable, and in these cases, she would simply look hopefully towards the future.

“Yeah, can you even _imagine_ being here during repairs, when the walls look even worse and are potentially toxic?” Disgust, on the other hand, was already grossed out by the prospect; needless to say, she didn’t like change that much.

“And unsafe!” Fear commented, though for the most part, he was focused on his own thing, having already returned Riley by the table where her tablet was laying, giving it an occasional glance.

“Oh, and you know what’s worse?” Disgust added. “The smell is so bad, I feel like the previous tenant _died_ in here. Or something! There was definitely a death involved here. Everyone’s right: when we set up shop, I’m only spending minimal time here, do you agree?” she asked.

“Even better; if we take our time to explore the city, we won’t get lost as easily!” Fear complimented the idea, hoping to be at least somewhat helpful.

“For once, you actually bring us a good idea…” Anger said, smiling, before frowning as he continued: “…or, that’s what I would say if there was anything worth exploring in this outback of the city that’s on the edges of the subway map! Not the center! Ever thought about that, beanpole?”

Usually, Joy would bring something happy to the table, but with so much hitting her all at once, she just… couldn’t. “You know what, you’re right,” she pointed out, “there _is_ no salvaging this, so let’s just see if we can get back to our tablet. Fear?”

Giving a glance towards Fear, Joy saw him in desperate action, and this was perfectly reflected by the Consciousness Screen view. Riley tried, time and time again, to turn her favorite tablet on, but all her attempts were to no avail; it would seem that it still needed some time to charge before becoming operable again.

All the while, though, one emotion, sitting at the edge of the console, couldn’t muster a single comment: Sadness.

Giving a glance towards _her_, Joy was overtaken by a mixture of guilt and pity. She knew that the two personalities — those being Sadness’s and Riley’s — didn’t mix that well, and therefore, for the most part, while the other emotions got their fair share of time at the console, Sadness never did.

In the end, this sort of exclusion was unacceptable. While in the mind, Joy was unambiguously the leader and her word was generally taken as final, everyone else’s ideas were always taken into account, and though the emotions agreeing among themselves was one of the rarest things, they all came to shape Riley. If nothing could be found for Sadness to do…

Joy shuddered, but not so much in terms of an intrusive thought; rather, she was contemplating something that, with each passing day, seemed more and more reasonable. Indeed, in her darker moments, she wished that she could simply do away with Sadness altogether; if she continued to do nothing of importance and weigh the rest of the emotion team down, then perhaps she was better off in the deep mind.

Making her depart forever could be considered _very_ cruel by some, but the idea wasn’t _that_ far-fetched. After all, even Sadness herself had grown complacent to being the “doormat” of the team, and the others, too, wouldn’t be _that_ shocked by the development, right? And besides, Riley’s mind was nothing but flexible, and could _easily_ adapt to the loss of a single emotion — especially since there were four others, willing to perform above and beyond expectations in every single case…

Yet, for the time being, Sadness was still a teammate, and Joy absolutely hated seeing her like this, alone and forgotten. Since she had nothing better to do, she figured that she might as well make her day brighter. She scooted, together with her office chair, over to Sadness’s place on the far right.

“Is something the matter?” Joy asked, hoping to strike a conversation.

Not knowing where to begin, Sadness mumbled: “Yeah… a lot… this just doesn’t bring the mood to me…”

“It doesn’t to me either.” Joy started rambling. “At least back in America, we had something solid… great friends, a great house with lots of rooms… And what do we have here? Just because we’re literally on the fourteenth floor, it does _not_ mean that I’m going to feel as though I’m on top of the world.”

Joy was known to go on diatribes like this for quite some time now. It seemed as though, even in the Midwest, life brought a lot of troubles upon her, and the onset of puberty didn’t help the matters at all. Gradually, this caused Joy to turn to the greatest source of happiness that she could find within her little world: herself. In turn, Sadness tried her best to listen; it was the least she could do to support her companion, in lieu of doing anything useful at the console.

“But I suppose that’s Riley for ya,” Joy continued, blowing a raspberry. “Growing up, soon, she won’t even need us. I’m seeing it: any day, some sort of entity of logic, what’s it called… Consciousness! _That_ will take over and we’ll be out of a job. Or if not, it will just get worse and worse, and I won’t be able to manage it…”

Throughout the diatribe, Sadness didn’t say much, and instead, mostly patiently listened, nodding. However, Anger, Fear and Disgust quickly noticed the matter, and especially after Joy’s exclamation, wished that she would just shut up.

“Will you please get a room?” Disgust couldn’t help but say in disdain.

“Alright! Didn’t mean to…” Joy glumly stopped, before rolling with her chair towards the rough “middle” of Headquarters, and as she did, she made sure to hold onto Sadness’s chair, so that the two could roll together. Once they were there, Joy raised her feet and spun around in the chair for a bit, before placing her feet back down and turning to Sadness.

“It’s just… who else would manage these emotions, if I were to suddenly disappear? You?” Joy asked, sarcastically.

“I can barely keep up with you alone…” Sadness finally responded.

“And that’s why the most difficult part falls onto me. And yet, I do get tired — a lot! And that’s why I have you — you’re always someone I can talk to, and you will listen, and none of it will ever matter.” Joy said with a distinct “finishing” intonation, before giving the Consciousness Screen a brief glance, to see if either she or Sadness were needed.

And it looked as though they were. The tenure of Riley’s parents in the apartment wasn’t to last for long, and after they saw each of the rooms for themselves, as well as taking some pictures for reference in order to plan out how it all would look when renovated, they decided that they had more important matters to attend to. Slowly, they gathered their stuff, and Riley’s father found himself fiddling with the keys to find the right one again.

“Well, I guess that’s it, sunshine; the company’s waiting, both to greet me and to discuss the ongoing matters, and your mother… will be settling the immigration stuff…” he tried his best to explain.

“I think I got it! We just need to go to these places, in order, I think…” Riley’s mother, meanwhile, had taken out a small piece of paper with listed addresses, as well as a crude map to guide her to them; however, from the vantage point of Riley, the emotions couldn’t see much.

“So soon? So we won’t see you again?” Sadness couldn’t help but wonder, quietly standing up and dragging her own office chair, with little steps, towards her usual work spot.

“I suppose, until late evening, yes,” Joy responded, her chair already being right by the console. Sadness still took a little more while to scoot, but eventually, she was able to get to her familiar spot and act upon the console.

Riley suddenly looked down; it seemed that some things were simply not to last. In the end, everyone needed to have their own matters done: her father would be taking care of the business, her mother would be taking care of immigration stuff and Riley herself would need to… check out the school she were to go to, she supposed.

However, almost immediately, in her mind, Fear took over, and she worryingly spoke: “Can I at least stay for a while? My tablet needs charging…”

Riley’s parents gave each other a quick glance, and then, her mother turned back to her and lovingly answering: “I suppose so — I’ll try not to take too long, do you think you will be good to go in an hour?”

“Of course!” Riley smiled.

“In that case, see ya later; maybe we can go for a walk or something, I don’t know yet, haha!” Mom continued with a sensible chuckle.

“That’s nice!” Joy commented, still by the console.

“Thanks! I always appreciate it.” Riley spoke, still smiling. “Goodbye!” she said, waving to her parents.

“Good luck out there, you two!” her father said, heading out, and soon enough, his mother followed, leaving Riley alone in her apartment for the first time.

Riley’s attention was immediately turned to her favorite Chinese tablet. Realizing that he hadn't tried to see if it would turn on, Fear made her hit the power button once again, and as luck would have it, more than one pleasant thing happened in a row. After enough frustration with 0% battery levels, the device finally showed signs of life, starting with its familiar logo, and then, after a bit of loading, going to the lock screen.

“Yay!” Joy involuntarily exclaimed, before going: “Alright, now what?”


End file.
